My Yakuza

by A.J. Llewellyn, John Simpson

Shiro Yamada has infiltrated a fearsome Yakuza clan in Tokyo in search of his missing mother, but now both their lives are at stake, unless he s willing to kill a New York City cop.Shiro Yamada s problem has always been his lovely, wayward mum, Siono, who was whisked to her native city of Tokyo from their home in Honolulu, Hawaii by a mysterious businessman. Now she s gone missing and may even be dead, according to a strange telephone call.Scraping together money to fly to Tokyo, Shiro learns that his mum s boyfriend was none other than Shun ichi Harada, a major Yakuza clan leader. He has no choice but to infiltrate the deadly gang as a low-level bike messenger. He finds out his mother was forced into sexual slavery, but is she dead or alive?Shiro puts his life at risk, and that of a young Yakuza prostitute, Miki, by asking too many questions. The Yakuza have figured out who Shiro is and if he wants to survive, he must travel to New York and eliminate a powerful enemy: Kono Takumi. The man s crime? He is a NYPD detective who infiltrated the Yakuza to solve a murder mystery. Not only that, but Kono is gay, which the clan finds offensive.Unfortunately, so is Shiro. Will he shoot to kill the one man he finds so attractive? Or is this a dangerous game in which there are no winners?Reader Advisory: This book contains some graphic scenes."

Genres: M M Romance, Erotica, Contemporary, Gay

152 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 27, 2010

About the author

A.J. Llewellyn lives in California, but dreams of living in Hawaii. Frequent trips to all the islands, bags of Kona coffee in the fridge and a healthy collection of Hawaiian records keep this writer refueled.

A.J’s passion for the islands led to writing a play about the last ruling monarch of Hawaii, Queen Lili’uokalani as well as a non-erotic novel about the overthrow of her kingdom written in diary form from her maid’s point of view.

A.J. never lacks inspiritation for male/male erotic romances and on the rare occasion this happens, pursues other passions such as collecting books on Hawaiiana, surfing and spending time with friends and animal companions.

A.J. Llewellyn believes that love is a song best sung out loud.

Reviews

[Serena Yates · Rating 5 out of 5]

'My Yakuza' is an amazing book about love in desperate circumstances and between two men who are very unlikely partners. Their story held me spellbound from the first to the last page. Its classification as an action/suspense novel is accurate: this is not a romance in the traditional sense, but a clever combination of the love interest with the crime and mystery elements. I found it to be a fascinating mix and one of the few action/suspense books I ended up loving.

Shiro is an unlikely hero, and ill-prepared for the trials he is put through. All he wants is to find out what happened to his mother, but he is pulled into the dark world of the Yakuza and his life changes. While he seems fragile, I loved his will to survive and to do the right thing, his ability to stand up for himself when needed and his basic innocence and charm. I hated what he had to go through and suffered every step alongside him.

Kono is, in his own way, just as amazing as Shiro, but his opposite. A tough NYPD cop, he is well equipped to deal with the violence and to keep Shiro safe. What gets to him are the softer emotions that emerge as he spends time with the younger man. While he seems less charming on the surface, his hidden depths and loyalty demanded my respect and I ended up liking him as much as Shiro.

Quite graphically violent in places, this story is, I believe, an accurate reflection of the world it is set in. Not for the faint-hearted by any means. Even though I needed several breaks to deal with the emotional intensity and violence, I kept coming back to it wanting to know what happens next. This book was more than well worth the emotional effort it took me to deal with some of what happened and is one of those stories that will stay with me for a long time.



NOTE: This book was provided by Total-E-Bound for the purpose of a review on Rainbow Book Reviews.

[Silverus Snape · Rating 5 out of 5]

My Yakuza OUT NOW!!
Purchase Link: http://www.total-e-bound.com/product....



Shiro Yamada has infiltrated a fearsome Yakuza clan in Tokyo in search of his missing mother, but now both their lives are at stake, unless he’s willing to kill a New York City cop.
Shiro Yamada’s problem has always been his lovely, wayward mum, Siono, who was whisked to her native city of Tokyo from their home in Honolulu, Hawaii by a mysterious businessman. Now she’s gone missing and may even be dead, according to a strange telephone call.
Scraping together money to fly to Tokyo, Shiro learns that his mum’s boyfriend was none other than Shun’ichi Harada, a major Yakuza clan leader. He has no choice but to infiltrate the deadly gang as a low-level bike messenger. He finds out his mother was forced into sexual slavery, but is she dead or alive?
Shiro puts his life at risk, and that of a young Yakuza prostitute, Miki, by asking too many questions. The Yakuza have figured out who Shiro is and if he wants to survive, he must travel to New York and eliminate a powerful enemy: Kono Takumi. The man’s crime? He is a NYPD detective who infiltrated the Yakuza to solve a murder mystery. Not only that, but Kono is gay, which the clan finds offensive.
Unfortunately, so is Shiro. Will he shoot to kill the one man he finds so attractive? Or is this a dangerous game in which there are no winners?
we all know that silver loves a good AJ book but be damned if it’s not my wet dream that AJ Llewellyn and John Simpson write a book together!!!! Well My Yakuza is My Wet Dream come true!!! This book has all the things I have come to love about AJ’s books... Hot Kinky Man sex, Hawaiian Humor (You just got Leid) and a weird Kind of Lesson (a Museum about Parasites). The Flip side is Johns All empowering knowledge of all things Cops. This was one of those books I had to physically be forced to put down (sorry family). AJ and John take you to beautiful haunting scary places and you feel as if you yourself are being hunted by the Yakuza and your life and those you care about hang in the balance.
I felt Shiro’s pain and desperation to find his mom in Japan. But how do you find which doesn’t want to be found? I felt his pain when he learns he trusts in the wrong people and ends up on the bad side of a Needle and is told to kill someone who betrayed the Yakuza worse than he himself has. So in a game of cat and mouse and kill or be killed how do you save everyone you love and come out alive yourself? Well in walks the Wonderfully sex and powerful Kono. Can the2 of them find away to save everyone, themselves and not lose their hearts to love? Well I know the answer to all those question and many more you are going to have to Buy this book and read it. I can NOT express enough the Importance of reading this book. You will lose yourself in the beauty, the suspense and the ending. My only hope is that there is truly to come from this sexy and awesome Duo.

I know I said I Was going to Rate the awesomeness of a book based on my Glitter lips but as I am finding out sadly they are more trouble than they are worth so on a scale of 1-100 the awesomeness of this book would exceed Infinity!! I can’t help it this Dynamic Duo is almost as awesome as when AJ and DJ team up (By far my most favorite Paring sorry)
Lastly Hotness This book is so hot I don’t know if I have a rating high enough so on a scale of 1-100 I will rate this 100+

I am an avid reader and I am privileged to read many great books but My Yakuza is one for the Ages… It is truly now one of my top 10 Most talked about books. You don’t have to take my word for it I don’t think that there is going to be a reviewer out there that wont love this book as must or more than I do.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic story. I love AJ's books but this is the first one by John Simpson that I have read so wasn't sure what to expect. This is an action packed thriller that is quite graphic in places where it needs to be. I loved the couple and their developing relationship as well as the trials they faced. Great insight into the the Yakuza culture.

[Feliz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shiro Yamada is half-Hawaiian, born of a Japanese mother in Hawaii where he feels at home. When his mother, who is of somewhat easy virtue, falls for Yakuza boss Shun’ichi Harada and goes missing in Tokyo, Shiro sets about finding her by ways of infiltrating the Harada clan. But he is uncovered soon enough. His immediate boss Nobuo-san, an ice-cold sadist, takes his cruel delight in punishing Shiro for his “lies” with torture and afterwards presenting him with an awful challenge. Shun’ichi Harada, the head of the Yakuza clan, is under arrest in New York. Only one man can send Shun’ichi Harada to prison, NYPD Detective Kono Takumi, who’d been undercover in the Harada organization for a year. Nobuo-san sends Shiro to New York, commanding him to kill Kono within two days, or Shiro’s mother and his friend Miki will die. Even the life of Shiro’s beloved grandmother back home in Hawaii might be at stakes. Shiro knows the threat to the women is real, his own body bearing wounds to witness that fact. But Shiro is no killer. What’s more, he has felt an instant attraction to his assigned target from the moment he lays eyes on Kono’s face in a photo. But how can he risk his own life and the lives of three innocent women on behalf of a total stranger?

Ever since Kono Takumi has returned from his undercover assignment in Tokyo, he has been looking over his shoulder. He knows the Yakuza killers are after him. Faced with the decision of going into hiding with Witness Protection or in a remote police post in Far Rockaway, Kono refuses to cower. His new department, although reputed to be one of the hardest precincts in the NYPD, turns out to have upright colleagues and an impressive leader, Lieutenant “Loo” Jerrell, who has no problems both kicking his men’s asses as well as having their backs. When the threat of falling prey to a Yakuza assassin suddenly becomes very real for Kono two weeks before the crucial trial, Kono has to think very fast about how he can get out of this mess alive.

Both Kono and Shiro are well-rounded characters. In a way, Shiro is some kind of anti-hero who stumbles head over heels into something that is way to big for him, a fact he only realizes when it’s almost too late. Although he’s scared to death, he doesn’t run screaming, but faces the challenge and shows true courage. Kono is a no-nonsense kind of man, very self confident and determined to make his own destiny against all odds. Yet, he isn’t too stubborn to ask for help if he has to, and puts his trust firmly into justice and the law like a good law-enforcer should.

I always though that John Simpson’s and AJ Llewellyn’s writing styles were not too far apart, and after reading this, I think those two authors make a fine writing pair. Their styles merge into a clear and crisp narrative, which makes for a fast paced reading, although the many short sentences come across a little breathless at times. A few times the conciseness reminds of a court report or a police log, which might be intentional given that a big part of the action involves police procedures. The latter ring true with realism right down to the goings-on of everyday business in an ill-reputed and out-of the-way police district. The story is set in Tokyo, New York, and Hawaii, with all three settings vivid and carrying a distinct feeling of location.

What I like best about John Simpson’s writing is the way his characters get about what they want without a lot of rigmarole. Once they make a decision, they stick to it and set about making it work, just like Shiro does after he makes up his mind to defy the Yakuza, just like Kono does after he gets past his inhibitions.
In his more recent works, I found that A.J. Llewellyn wielded a deadly pen when it came to characterization, and I was delighted to find the same poignant observations here, particularly with some of the minor characters, like the greek waitress or Shiro’s friend Miki who came alive on just a few well-placed sentences. And Shiro’s grandmother was a real gem, all Arsenic and Old Lace with a decent dash of the Goddess Pele thrown in.

Normally I don’t care overly much if an author is male or female as long as the story is well written. In this case, though, the writing felt distinctively male, straightforward and unadorned, which fit the storyline nicely. This was also true for the sex scenes – of which there were a lot – which were graphic, right to the point, not without emotion but bare of sentimentality.

All in all, a gripping, fast, entertaining – if at times a tad bloodthirsty - read I’d recommend to fans of mystery, thrillers and hot cops.

[Kelly (Maybedog) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was completely disappointed by this book. It had a lot of promise but just didn't deliver. The story was good, and there were parts where I had no idea how it could possibly end happily without anyone important ending up on the run forever. But there were disjointed info dumps mixed with too many flashbacks. The story was confusing and repetitive.

Here's an example of something that didn't make sense to me at all:

A hypnotic disco beat made Shiro's food inadvertently tap against the leg of his bar stool. At the age of twenty-three, the disco era had bypassed him. his generation was hot-wired to different times, so his body's response to the music surprised him.

What disco-era person goes to clubs still? Why would you have to be raised with a type of music to find it easy to find rhythm? Who is so aware of their body that they would consciously think something like this?

Here's another example of bad writing:

His cell phone ran gas he walked outside. His feet touched the wet pavement. He'd forgotten his shoes inside. The front door clicked shut. He had no choice but to press the buzzer again. When Keizo heard his voice, he was silent for a beat.

That kind of short sentence writing drives me crazy. I also was confused at first because I thought he stepped outside because his phone rang so I didn't understand why he immediately had to go back inside. The fact that his phone rang was never mentioned again.

There were good parts. One thing I liked was the first sex scene where there is painting during it; the imagery was beautiful. Some people might be bothered by it, though, because it's between the MC and someone who isn't the other MC, someone he cares about deeply. Another thing I really liked was that when one of the MCs was tortured, he vomited and urinated all over himself. The later rarely happens to MCs.

Another thing I was impressed with was how different the parts that took place in Japan felt from the parts that took place in the US did. There was something about it that just felt like another world than I'm used to and not always in a good way. But that was fine because it was also the world of the Yakuza. Sometimes it was specific experiences, like booking a hotel room from a big light up board in the lobby, but sometimes it was just the way the descriptions were worded, I think. I was surprised to find it was written by A.J. Llewellyn because it felt so different from her other work and so much like it was written by a Japanese national or first gen immigrant.

But the bad outweighed this. There was switching of POV from paragraph to paragraph which is a huge pet peeve of mine. A high level Yakuza man does his own dirty work and flies to harass an old woman for information. Sex traffickers are highly interested in a woman who couldn't be younger than 37 and was mostly likely in her 40s. She's much too old. They would have no interest.

There is way too much sex. The MCs have sex for hours and hours at a time without doing anything else. I didn't buy the love connection at all.

Shiro is very arrogant. While looking at himself in the mirror he thinks, "How could Kono not want to possess such a body?" This wasn't to psych himself up to go try to lure the man. He convinced he already has him. He's just preening. And this came in the same scene where he had just found out that the man he really cared about was dead. Although they didn't have a relationship so his interest in Kono wasn't really cheating, Shiro's interest was far more than just seeing Keizo as a fuck-buddy.

Scavenger Hunt note: This is a story about the Yakuza and cops and there isn't a single tattoo on the cover. Bummer!

[Melanie~~ · Rating 2 out of 5]

This story didn't really hold my interest, hence the really long time it took to read through it. I did not feel very connected to Shiro or Kono, nor did I feel much connection between them.

I thought the sex scene between the unfortunate Keizo and Shiro was far hotter with more of a connection between the men than anything that occurred between Shiro and Kono. The coming together of Shiro and Kono seemed very contrived and forced.

There were a few holes in the timeline and things felt a little jumpy after Shiro arrived in New York. The big thing for me was the editing. It was sloppy: misspelled character name, typos, wrong word usage. Additionally, I found that allowing British-esque spellings in US settings with US characters was very distracting.

I was even put off that the narration listed stops in "Dallas, Texas, then Los Angeles" as if Los Angeles can be identified without its state but Dallas could not. There aren't many Americans who would not assume Dallas, Texas, especially when talking about transcontinental flights. It was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back for me. If I hadn't had such a rough time with the rest of the book this probably wouldn't have tipped me over the edge. Alas, it did.

I'll probably round this down to 2 stars for my review. Just didn't work for me. :-(

ETA:
I think that given all Kono and Shiro went through (and are likely to go through) because of the Yakuza, the nickname/endearment "My Yakuza" is in poor taste.

[Barb ~rede-2-read~ · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's very rare when I can't find a lot of positives to say about a book but this is one of those times.

The story surrounds a young man named Shiro who tries to infiltrate the Yakuza in Toyko to find his mother. He doesn't succeed, and in fact, is pressed into service by the Yakuza to kill a key witness, a NYPD detective who is due to testify against their leader. Long story short, he joins forces with the cop to thwart the Yakuza.

I found the plot simplistic and unrealistic. Every avenue that could have been explored for drama quickly ended with an easy solution. The sex was given way too many pages, and the two MCs never had the chemistry I would have hoped for. Shiro was ready to jump Kona from the moment he saw his picture, so when he met him in real time, it was all systems go. There certainly never seemed to be a deep emotional connection. The authors could have used a really good beta reader because there were quite a few holes in the story and facts that weren't correct.

I'm being generous in giving this one a two star rating.

[Pamela Su · Rating 1 out of 5]

Lord, where do I even begin with this?

I didn't want to dislike this book. It had an interesting blurb.

The way the story played out was silly. Also, I think the reader was better off NOT being able to see what the characters were thinking because it made them seem really obnoxious.

Example: "He looked down his chest in the mirror and was pleased with what he saw except for the needle marks. How could Kono not want to possess such a body? Shiro smiled once more as he turned to enter into the bedroom."

Was Shiro always this vain? He didn't seem that way for most of the book. Even Kono seemed to have split personality!

By the way, what the heck was with all the omniscient characters?! How could Kono see Shiro's toes curling while having sex with him? Just what kind of position were they in? It seemed standard from the description and that just made no sense.

I might have been more forgiving of this book if the sex had made sense. Instead the sex scenes were ridiculous and the dialogue extremely cheesy.

Ugh. Just ugh.

[Gin · Rating 2 out of 5]

There wasn't much of anything that I liked about this book. The dialogue was almost robotic and monotone. The characters were very poorly developed. Other than one being a cop and one being a student turned undercover Yakuza there wasn't much to them at all. They had sex non-stop for supposedly hours and hours for an entire month. It wasn't even very descriptive or hot sex. The plot was completely unbelievable and had lots of loose ends. Supposedly the day was saved by a 60 year old woman and no consequences whatsoever. Both MCs were shown in rather intimate and emotionally connected situations with other people. I honestly felt like there was more of a connection between the MCs and these other characters than there were between the MCs. Anyways, I don't think I will read any more of this author!

[Kitten ~♥️ MM series ~ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Generously going for 2.5 ★'s

This could of been so…. much better.
The story line was good. I felt they through sex in every time they lost direction w/the story. The sex scenes are repetitive.
The actual dialogue between the MC's had narrated moments.
The frequent japanese words w/out definition was irritating.

[Omega696 · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had high hopes about this book, it had a potential to be a really good story.

Unfortunatelly I like characters to be inteligent and none of them made an ounce of sense... Actually the only one I really liked was Shiro's grandma who was crazy but in an entertaining way. She was also preposterous but in a good way.